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very severe judge in poetical matters, and a very candid critic, so far as he was concerned;"I and in the same letter he speaks of recollecting Gill's “almost constant conversations with him," and regrets being absent from one from whose society he had never once gone away “without a manifest accession of literary knowledge.” Gill, as we shall see, was by no means the model of a man, as regarded either character or temper; but that he should have stood for a year or two in this relation to Milton, is something to his credit.

Usually, however, an ingenuous boy has friends and acquaintances of his own age, with whom he exchanges confidence. Doubtless Milton had such among his school-fellows at St. Paul's. His brother Christopher had entered the school, a boy of nine or ten, before he left it. Among his school-fellows nearer his own age was Robert Pory or Porey, who became a clergyman, and was one of the prebendaries of St. Paul's in the year of the Restoration. He was probably Milton's form-fellow, for he left St. Paul's School for Col. lege along with Milton. But the school-fellow between whom and Milton there existed the most affectionate intimacy was a youth named Charles Diodati.

As the name indicates, Diodati was of Italian extraction. The family had migrated originally from Lucca to Geneva on account of their Protestant opinions. Of two brothers born in Geneva, the younger, named Giovanni, remained there, and became eminent as a Reformed preacher and theologian. He was professor of Hebrew in the University of Geneva and one of the pastors of the city; and he was the author of theological writings much admired in their day by the Calvinists of different countries, and still found in theological libraries. He was one of the leading foreign members of the Synod of Dort. His name is now best remembered in association with the Italian version of the Scriptures published by him in 1607, and known as Diodati's version. The elder brother of this Genevese divine, born in 1574 and named Theodore, had adopted the medical profession, and, coming over to England in early life, had there married an English lady of some fortune, and obtained good practice and considerable reputation as a physician. About the year 1609 he had a house at Brentford, and was in professional attendance on the heir-apparent, Prince Henry, and his sister the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of Bohemia; and a successful case of extraordinary phlebotomy which occurred there in his practice --sixty ounces of blood drawn from a patient over seventy in three days — attracted much attention, and was afterwards

thought worthy of scientific record.' But London was his usual place of abode; and here his son Charles was born in or about 1608. He was, therefore, almost exactly of the same age as Milton, or only a little older. In the routine of scholastic study, however, he had somewhat the start of Milton. He was sent at a very early age to St. Paul's School, whence he removed, in February 1621-2, to Trinity College, Oxford — the College to which the younger Gill belonged, and which he had only recently left. Notwithstanding this disparity, an intimacy had sprung up between the two youths much closer than is common even between lads of the same form. Milton's allusions to their friendship in some of his subsequent letters show on what familiar terms it rested. He calls him “pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput” (“ a heart attached to his, and his so faithful one"); also his “lepidum sodalem” (“sprightly companion”); and once, when Diodati, sending him some verses, asks for some in return in proof of continued affection, Milton protests that his love is too great to be conveyed in metre. From the tone of these allusions one fancies Diodati as a quick, amiable, intelligent youth, with something of his Italian descent visible in his face and manner. We also gather that he had a brother, with whom Milton was likewise acquainted. It is to be remembered, however, that during the last year or two of Milton's stay at school, Diodati was pursuing his studies at Oxford, so that their communications were necessarily less frequent then than they had been. 3

At the close of the year 1624, or shortly after the foregoing Paraphrases of the Psalms were written, Milton too was ready for College. As it happened, however, it was not his departure, but that of another member of the family that was to cause the first break in the little household of Bread-street. While the poet had been receiving his lessons from Young and other domestic masters, and while he and his brother Christopher had been attending St. Paul's School, their sister Anne - the poet's senior by at least a year or two, and, it may be, by as many as five or six years had grown up, under such education as was deemed suitable for her, into a young woman of from eighteen to two-and-twenty, and a very desirable match for somebody. Accordingly, almost daily during the year 1624, Milton finds in the house a certain Mr. Edward Philips, originally from Shrewsbury, but now for a consid. erable number of years resident in London, where he holds a very good situation in an important Government office — the Crown Office in Chancery. He had been bred up” in this office, and at last (but probably not till after this date) “ came to be Secondary of the office under old Mr. Bembo.”i Philips is well known to the elder Milton both professionally and otherwise ; and the younger Milton hears one day without surprise that he is the accepted suitor of his sister Anne. Some time towards the close of the year, as near as can be guessed, the marriage takes place, the bride “having

considerable dowry given her by her father;" and the poet's sister, now Mrs. Philips, removes from Bread-street to a house of

her own.

The marriage of the poet's sister does not seem to have taken place in the parish of Allhallows Bread-street; else, if Mr. Stocke himself had not performed the ceremony, it might have been performed by a curate whom he had then recently engaged to assist him in his declining years, and whose name was to be known in the Church of England long after Mr. Stocke's had been forgotten. This was the Rev. Brian Walton, the future Bishop, and Editor of the Polyglott Bible, then fresh from Cambridge, and about twentyfour years of age. It is something in the early life of Milton that he must, if but for a few months, have seen the future Polyglott in the pulpit, and have heard him preach.

Passing from such matters as these, specially interesting to the household in Bread-street, into that larger world of political events within which this household, like every other in England, was for the time included, that which we find engrossing the public mind in 1623-4, is still the great business of the “Spanish match.” We have seen with what disgust the English had regarded the apathy of James and Buckingham when James's son-in-law, the ElectorPalatine, was maintaining the Protestant cause against the Emperor; with what rage they saw the Elector crushed in the contest, deprived not only of the Bohemian kingdom, but of the Palatinate itself, and driven with his British-born wife into a mean exile in Holland. The feeling then was that, as the Palatinate had been lost from the want of timely assistance from England, the least that England could do was to labor for its recovery. This feeling broke out strongly in James's third parliament (1621-2), which, though refractory on every other point, showed a wonderful willingness to grant subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate. But the King was very sluggish. The same reason which had kept him from moving in defence of the Palatinate -- his desire, namely, to obtain the rich Spanish Infanta as a wife for his son Charles — prevented him from any sincere effort now. His Protestant theology was not proof against the chance of a Catholic daughter-in-law, whose dowry would be counted by millions. Judge, then, of the national horror when day by day the business of the Spanish match seemed to be approaching the dreaded conclusion, and especially when at last (Feb. 1622-3) Prince Charles, with the Marquis of Buckingham as his escort, set out secretly for the Continent, on his way to Madrid ! For months after the departure of the prince, the country was full of sinister rumors. It was rumored that the court of Madrid were tampering with the faith of the prince. It was known that pledges had been given favorable to the Catholic religion in England. There seemed to be nothing between the English nation and that which they dreaded most -- a repetition of the reign of Philip and Mary! What, then, were the rejoicings over England when it was suddenly announced, in the autumn of 1623, that the match had after all been broken off, and that the prince was on the way to England without the Infanta! What a surprise, what a release! In September, 1623, the prince did return; during that month and the next England knew no bounds to joy; and in February 1623-4, a new parliament met to congratulate the king on the rupture with Spain, and to urge him to make the rupture complete by declaring

The king, old and feeble, reluctantly consented. What mattered it that the levies, to the number of twelve thousand, were of no avail; that they died of pestilence aboard their ships, without being able to land on any part of the Continent? What mattered it that the prince, free from his engagements to one Catholic princess, was about to marry another — the Princess HenriettaMaria, youngest sister of the reigning French king, Louis XIII.? Was not this princess the daughter of the great Henry IV., once the hero of the French Huguenots, and who, though he embraced Catholicism in order to secure the crown, had all his reign (15931610) governed France on Protestant rather than Catholic methods? French Catholicism with all its faults was a different thing from Spanish Catholicism! One only result, ominous as regarded the future, remained out of all the agitations of the last few years. Puritanism had possessed itself of more and more of the heart of the English people; and, even within the bounds of Parliament, men had begun to distinguish themselves by name into the Court Party, who thought of the king, and the Country Party, who thought of the nation. Such was the main current of national events during the four

years of Milton's life which were spent at St. Paul's School (1620-1625). Of the hundreds of smaller contemporary events, each a topic of nine days' interest to the English people in general or the people of London in particular, a few may be selected by way of sample:

or five

1620–21, March 15 (the Poet in his thirteenth year). Proceedings in Parliament against Lord Chancellor Bacon for bribery: issuing in his conviction and confession, and his sentence to be dismissed from office, to be disqualified for ever for the King's service, to be banished beyond the precincts of the Court, to pay a fine of £40,000, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. The heavier portions of the sentence were immediately remitted; but Bacon retired a disgraced and ruined man.

1621, July. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally kills a gamekeeper with an arrow at a deer-hunt. As the Archbishop was favorable to the Puritans a great deal was made of the accident at Court. It was even debated whether, as having shed man's blood, he was not incapacitated for his sacred office.

1623, Sunday, Oct. 26 (the Poet in his sixteenth year). Great commotion caused in London by the “Fatal Vespers in Blackfriars” – that is, by the fall of a building in that district where a congregation of Catholics had met to celebrate mass. Upwards of a hundred persons were killed; and as the public feeling against the Catholics and the Spanish match was then at its height, the accident was regarded as a judgment of God upon the hated sect. In the interest of this view, it was noted by the curious that the day — the 26th of October : - was the 5th of November in the Papal reckoning. No one was more ferocious on the occasion than young Gill, among whose Latin poems there is one expressly describing the incident. It is entitled In ruinam Camerce Papisticæ Londini, and here are a few of the lines:

Est locus ab atris qui vetus Fraterculis
Traxisse nomen fertur: hic Satanas modo
Habuit sacellum: Huc, proprio infortunio,
Octobris in vicesimo et sexto die